The more I write, the more I’m finding that inspiration can come from the most interesting places.

Now, I’m not really a person that derives a lot of enjoyment from watching television. Even reading can be very hit or miss for me – which is funny, considering how much I like to write (though, when I do find something I enjoy reading, you’d be hard pressed to get me to put it down until it is done). Instead, I mostly enjoy media from the realm of video games and music.

Playing video games has been my thing for a while, but music is something that I’ve only recently really started to explore. Before a year or so ago, I only enjoyed listening to a handful of artists and the stuff that I would record on any given day. Then three things happened that suddenly piqued my interest in music outside of what I would normally consider listening to.

These things were: Daft Punk doing the soundtrack for the new Tron movie, them subsequently coming out with the Random Access Memories album, and a friend of mine starting to send me links to all kinds of interesting albums he was randomly finding on YouTube.

While these three things didn’t happen back to back, their added influence pushed me towards the black hole that is music. Most of what I’ve found since has consisted of progressive rock and electronica, with a few bands standing out from the rest.

My favorite discovery in the past few years has been a progressive rock band called Beardfish. I could gush all day about how great their music is and how well they combine this element or that, but I’ll spare you. Suffice it to say, I like their music and the discovery of something that I enjoyed so much just spurred me on to look for more (and in the search for more progressive rock, that same friend pointed me towards progarchives.com…a fantastic resource).

More recently, I’ve come across a band that’s been around for a while – The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. They are a rock band from Canada that writes a lot of songs that reference the H.P. Lovecraft mythos. They only have a few albums, but the other day I bought their latest one, The Shadow out of Tim (2007), which is basically a rock opera version of the H.P. Lovecraft story The Shadow Out of Time.

The album is pretty good, with catchy tunes and a (mostly) coherent story that is overall fun to listen to. And when I was listening to it, inspiration hit.

Horror isn’t typically a genre that I would consider writing, but listening to this album, and the story it was telling, I had a sudden urge to write horror in the Lovecraft style (my first reaction was to write each song into a single part of a larger story, but rewriting a rewrite of something originally put to paper by H.P. Lovecraft is just so wrong).

Either way, I’ve heard the album half a dozen times already and have had nothing but the desire to put some kind of horror story to paper. Though I’m not sure what I’ll come up with, I’ll be thinking of an idea, if not an outline, through the rest of the week. While this isn’t really a full stroke of inspiration, it’s amazing how much something as simple as an album of 14 songs can push you to do something you never considered otherwise.

And that’s the funniest part.

When I first started writing, I planted my feet firmly in the sand and declared to myself that I was a science fiction writer. I was dead set on the title and began writing a trilogy of science fiction novels without doing so much as putting down an outline. I finished two and a half of the three planned books, but have put that project on hold because of the need for massive rewrites. Since then, however, I’ve drawn inspiration from my own work to write a murder mystery and even more inspiration from multiple sources to start the space opera WIP Infinity’s Heir.

Now, I have even more inspiration to work on another project I never expected I would have just a few days ago. I’m excited about the prospect of a foray into horror and hope that the inspiration I’m drawing from this album (and H.P. Lovecraft, by association) holds until I’ve developed something worthy of putting to paper.

I definitely won’t count my Cthulhu before they are hatched, but I’m hoping something good will be forthcoming soon.

I, and the dark god, will keep you all updated accordingly.